The Bridge of San Luis Rey

by Thornton Wilder

Brother Juniper notes, “The discrepancy between faith and the facts is greater than is generally assumed.”

before we can ask what is the meaning of human existence, we must ask what is its nature.

There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there can never be two that love one another equally well.”

He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer—a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.

While reading this book I am also reading the tenth of an eleven volume series by Upton Sinclair. The main character is a man named Lanny Budd. Sinclair has never called him an adventurer but he is rich in all these attributes.

Juan-les-Pins

This city is mentioned often in the latter Lanny Budd novels by Upton Sinclair.